Director Werner Herzog filming Encounters at the End of the World on location in Antarctica with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. In the Oscar-nominated documentary, Herzog journeys to Antarctica's McMurdo Station to find out what it is that drives its 1,000 inhabitants to want to live and work in this remotest of glacial landscapes

Werner Herzog on Mount Erebus. The set of Herzog's latest movie was one of the most inhospitable locations he has worked on. Previously, he has scaled volcanoes, suffered calamities in jungles on three continents and filmed in war zones; even so, he says, there was something elementally terrifying about the reality of a working day in Antarctica

Herzog was invited to film on the southern icecap by the US agency the National Science Foundation, which offers a limited number of grants to artists. He proposed using a two-man crew - a cinematographer, plus himself as soundman - which meant he saw off a rival proposal from Titanic director James Cameron, who wanted to take a crew of 36

There are the expert divers who drill 30ft vertical holes through the icecap to access its frigid, sci-fi underside, and then dive below to film. "These people only seem odd because when you look at the media and magazines, there is this kind of uniformity of people. Down there, you have characters who do not fit into magazines"

The visit was inspired by Herzog's 2005 film The Wild Blue Yonder, in which he combined pre-shot or found footage (some of it taken from a 1989 Nasa space mission), with underwater photography by his friend and musical collaborator, Henry Kaiser. (Kaiser also shot some of the deep sea footage for Encounters)

Herzog assures us that Encounters At The End of the World "will not be a film about fluffy penguins". The challenging subject matter (including a penguin death march, seal bagging, and a rooftop concert from a cell biologist) should come as no surprise to those familiar with his 2005 documentary Grizzly Man

Onstage at BFI Southbank, Werner Herzog shares his feelings on being nominated for an Oscar for his new documentary Encounters at the End of the World, why he loves living in Los Angeles and why being in Antarctica was a profoundly odd experience